


let's reintroduce ourselves (from a free point of view)

by andnowforyaya



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Asexual Character, Bisexual Character, Coming Out, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self-Acceptance, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 03:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14662002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: That night, Ten couldn’t stop thinking about the way Johnny’s hand felt over his. How cute Johnny was when he blushed. The way his hair fell over his eyes so he had to keep pushing it back behind his ear with a finger during class. Something in his stomach fluttered.





	let's reintroduce ourselves (from a free point of view)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naerys123](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naerys123/gifts).



> thank you S for the beta! it was super helpful and i love you
> 
> V, i really hope you like it! 
> 
> title from this [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYlW67CMRKM)

 

Ten winced when the fingers in his hair tightened into a fist and pulled at his short black hair, momentarily distracting him from what he was doing with his lips and tongue between the girl’s legs. She pushed her hips up and whined when Ten pulled away, his own fingers carefully prying the girl’s away from his scalp in search of relief.

“Don’t stop,” the girl said in a thin, wet voice. “You really know what you’re doing.”

He did know what he was doing, but the thing was, he really didn’t like it when his partners pulled his hair. It was something he’d only recently added to the ever-growing list he kept in his head of major turn-offs. Hair pulling, crying, biting, leaving hickeys and bruises, making out for too long. He preferred the lights off, and he hated cuddling, after. It made him want to crawl out of his skin.

He’d gotten caught up by this girl in his gender studies class. It was the first week of the new semester and Ten had signed up for this class to fill up his credits, thinking it could be an easy pass/fail elective as long as he spoke in class occasionally and focused his papers on dismantling the patriarchy. Easy, right?

Then this girl had started a debate with him ten minutes into class about the male gaze (to be fair, Ten thought she was talking about “male gays” for the longest time) and now they were here, in her dorm room and Ten was trying to get her off.

“Hey,” the girl said, cupping her palm against his cheek and pulling at his chin slightly until he was looking into her eyes. “You good?”

“Oh,” Ten said, blinking a few times. He’d zoned out thinking about his turn-offs, and now he felt incredibly silly, tucked into the space between this girl’s legs, stuffed under her covers. The backs of his knees were starting sweat, and his feet felt clammy. “Yeah, I just -- sorry,” he stumbled over his words, apologetic, and pressed his hand against her gently. She twitched at the unexpected touch with a giggle.

“It’s cool,” she said, sitting up and dragging herself back to lean against her pillows lining the wall. The dorm beds were twin-sized and flimsy and didn’t come with headboards, but at least she kept her sheets fresh and there wasn’t a mound of laundry at the foot-end of the bed. Ten couldn’t say the same about his own bed. “If you’re not into it, I can finish by myself.” She winked as she pulled her laptop into her lap, leaving Ten to stare at her dumbly, head poking out from under the covers.

“Huh?”

“Dude, it’s cool,” she said. “Just hit me up whenever you want to hang.”

She didn’t kick him out, but it was clear that she no longer intended to interact with Ten. She opened up the screen of her laptop and Ten saw the blue light from the screen reflect off her skin and her eyes. He showed himself out, feeling strangely relieved and like he’d been released from a dreaded obligation.

.

The sun was setting when he stepped outside of the building. His own dorm building was on an adjacent street, with the student life center in between. Ten debated going into the cafeteria in the student life center to pick up dinner, but it was late enough in regular dinner hours for him to know that the food would be stale at best, and his stomach turned at the thought of eating gloppy refried beans and soggy tortillas -- which is what he’d end up finding under the hot lamps in the cafeteria -- for another meal.

So he texted his roommate Jaehyun that he’d be picking up pizza from the shop _behind_ the student life center and coming back in a few. Jaehyun immediately texted back the toppings he wanted on his two slices.

Ten’s feet moved on autopilot, taking him to the pizza shop as his mind wandered. He’d gone back home to Thailand this past winter break, his first time back since starting college in New York City over two years ago, and he spent two whole weeks with his family and friends from high school, and he couldn’t have felt more like a fish out of water the whole time he was with them. His English had improved while he was in the States to, it seemed, the detriment of his first language. His friends spoke about things that he kept needing to ask them to repeat, and his family kept looking at him and sighing and patting his hair like he was a beloved pet dog on the last leg of his life.

“Did you meet a nice girl yet?” his mother asked him at least three times within the first day he got back home. He wasn’t sure it was the right time for him to say, “Well, I’ve actually met a lot of nice girls, a lot of nice boys, too. Yes, I like both.” So he’d just kept his mouth shut and grinned mysteriously, which she probably took as a good thing because she stopped asking after that.

And now that he was back in New York, it kind of felt like he didn’t belong here, either.

“You’re back!” Jaehyun shouted, throwing his hands up in the air and beaming at his roommate’s -- or the pizza’s -- arrival from where he was sitting cross-legged on his bed surrounded by loose leaf paper. “Thank god you went for pizza. I’ve been reviewing all my syllabuses for all my classes and lost track of the time--”

“Nerd,” Ten quipped automatically, which Jaehyun ignored with ease and familiarity.

“--and you’re saving my life right now. Oh, and, how was it?”

Ten shrugged and put the pizza box on his desk on top of his laptop. He’d texted Jaehyun a series of emojis earlier that were meant to be deciphered as: _met a girl, going back to hers_ , and Jaehyun was pretty attuned to Ten’s emoji patterns after years of being friends. “It didn’t really happen.”

“What? Why not? You always--”

“It just didn’t,” Ten said, scowling. “I’m gonna shower first.”

“Your pizza’s gonna get cold,” Jaehyun warned in a song-song voice.

Ten didn’t care.

.

Gender Studies met twice a week: once for lecture and once for a breakout session in a smaller group led by a TA. Ten wandered into the classroom for the breakout session he’d been assigned to and found himself face to face with a man so beautiful Ten forgot how to breathe. He stared. Hard.

The stranger was tall and slim and his features were sharp, all hard angles and straight lines, but his dark hair was soft and curled a bit from where it was tucked behind his ears. When he noticed Ten was staring, the guy cocked his head at Ten from where he was leaning with his hip against the desk at the front of the room, dressed in dark jeans and a red fitted t-shirt and flipping through a small stack of papers in his hands. He grinned at Ten hesitantly, showing two rows of straight white teeth.

“Hi,” Ten breathed out in a weird sort of whisper as he approached.

“Hi,” the guy said. He had a low voice, slightly husky, and it made Ten’s knees turn to jelly.

“I’m here for Gender Studies breakout,” Ten said.

“Uh,” the guy said. “Yeah, me too.”

“I’m Ten Leechaiyapornkul...though it’s probably something different in the roster. I can spell it, if you need.”

“I’m Johnny Suh,” Johnny said, holding his hand out for Ten to shake. Ten took it. His hands were big and dwarfed Ten’s slimmer, shorter fingers. “Do you always introduce yourself with your full name?”

“Aren’t you taking attendance?”

“Uh,” Johnny said. “No.” Then his eyes lit up with realization. “Oh! I’m not the TA. I’m taking the class, too. And sitting over there.” He pointed at a desk in the corner where a book bag was slumped by the legs of the connecting chair. The walls of the small classroom were lined with desks like this, forming a semi-circle that was meant to encourage discussion and conversation, and facing an outdated blackboard. “I just got here early and Heechul asked me to make sure no one stole his shit. He’s the TA.”

“Well, this is embarrassing." Ten laughed robotically. "Can we pretend this didn’t happen?” He was still shaking Johnny’s hand and wasn’t sure he wanted to let go. Mostly because if he let go, he would probably turn into a balloon and float away to hide from his embarrassment.

Johnny laughed, too, an easy and carefree laugh, and Ten’s ears turned pink at the tips. “It’s cool, man,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you. Want to sit by me?” He said it earnestly and innocently, the way a child might invite another child to play with them in the sandbox on a playground.

Ten did, and it was set. They were seat-partners.

.

“What should we do this weekend?” On Wednesday nights Ten, Jaehyun, and Doyoung gathered together in the lounge in the student life center to catch up, eat, occasionally study, and mostly fuck around on their phones in comfortable nearness with each other. It was their thing and Ten could imagine five years down the road still doing this with them, though preferably at someone’s apartment, or maybe at a neighborhood bar.

Wednesday nights were perfect because it was after Ten had dance practice with the hip hop crew he joined sophomore year, and after Doyoung finished running the weekly Korean Student Association meetings, and after Jaehyun finished a marathon of tutoring sessions with underclassmen. He didn’t really need the extra income, but said it was a good way to fluff up his resume, which he also didn’t really need since he was on the college basketball team, regularly volunteered, and probably ran a charity in his spare time.

They had found a couple of big armchairs on the top floor of the student life center in the lounge and dragged them over to the big windows that let them look out over the public park that was the best approximation of a campus quad for a city college, since most of the college’s buildings surrounded it.

“It was Youngjae’s birthday a few weeks ago so he’s having a belated birthday party at some club,” Doyoung offered, sinking lower into his seat and scrolling through notifications on his phone. He looked a bit worn, like the meeting hadn’t quite gone the way he liked. Ten knew that Doyoung was kind of a control freak. A nice one, but he’d definitely prepared an agenda for the meeting and probably hadn’t gotten to all of the decisions he’d set out to get to. “We should go.”

“Who’s Youngjae again?” Ten asked. “And why belated?”

“A hyung in the KSA. You know him; I think he’s friends with Jongup in your crew. Belated because he sucks at planning.”

“Oh, right. Is he fun?”

Jaehyun laughed. “You’re always so blunt.”

Doyoung’s mouth quirked up at the corners. “He’s pretty fun.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know, somewhere in Midtown. I can check, though.”

Ten nodded and said, “Johnny said there was this bar in Midtown that’s pretty cool. It’s like a Tiki bar. We should check it out.”

“Who’s Johnny?” Doyoung wasn’t looking at his phone anymore, but staring intensely at Ten. At least it felt intense. Ten had trouble sometimes discerning intensity with Doyoung, since he gave 100% to everything he did.

“My friend,” Ten said.

Jaehyun sat up and leaned into Doyoung’s space conspiratorially. “Ten has a crush on him. It’s so cute.”

“I do not!” Ten blushed, sitting up in alarm.

Doyoung grinned. “Oh _that_ Johnny!”

“What do you mean _that_ Johnny? Wait, you guys talk about me like that?”

Jaehyun spoke in a high-pitched, slightly nasally voice, clearly intending to mimic Ten’s, “Oh, I met someone in my Gender Studies class, Jaehyun! He’s so cute! And tall. He’s cool. He likes pizza. He likes _deep dish_ pizza. What’s deep dish pizza? I have to look it up. He makes me want to learn all the things!”

“I never said that!” Ten said shrilly as Jaehyun and Doyoung laughed, slapping each other on the arms in camaraderie. “And I don’t sound like that!”

“No, it’s cute!” Jaehyun said. “And you kind of do. You’re always talking about him, dude.”

“Am not.”

“I’ve never even met the guy and I know his favorite foods, that his birthday’s in February, that he likes Usher, that he was born in Chicago, what he was wearing last time you saw him…”

Ten threw his hands in front of his face to hide like he was watching a scary movie between his fingers and felt the heat radiating off his cheeks against his palms. “He’s just interesting!” he shrieked through his fingers, trying to defend himself.

“Yeah, to you,” Doyoung said emphatically. “Because you have a crush on him.”

“Aw,” Jaehyun cooed. Ten felt Jaehyun’s fingers tugging at his elbows in an effort to get Ten to reveal himself again. “It’s fine, Ten. It’s cute! I swear. And he does seem like a cool dude.”

“It’s not a crush,” Ten mumbled. It wasn’t. Sure, he wanted to hold Johnny’s hand sometimes when they walked out of class together and to lunch, and he liked spending time with him, and he liked learning about him, his likes and dislikes, his perspectives on the things they were talking about in class and outside of class. He liked when Johnny asked him questions about his life and views and he liked how they could be silly one moment making inappropriate jokes about bananas and serious the next, talking about family and the future. But a crush meant he wanted to kiss him. Take it a step further, and a crush meant he wanted to sleep with him. Ten did not want to sleep with him, not really. He thought it might be nice to cuddle with him, though. Johnny was so much bigger than he was and would be warm and soft and a little heavy, just enough pressure for it to be reassurance that he was there.

Jaehyun’s expression softened. His fingers were still in the crook of Ten’s elbow, and he rubbed him there gently. “Okay,” he said. “It’s whatever, Ten.”

.

The bar Youngjae picked for his party was cramped, dark, and loud. By the time Doyoung, Jaehyun, and Ten got there, the crowd inside was rollicking. The bar wasn’t meant for dancing but somehow someone from Youngjae’s crew had commandeered the DJ booth and was spinning upbeat dance tracks. Ten and his friends had pre-gamed a bit with the cheap liquor in Jaehyun’s staff and as soon as Ten entered the bar, the music was calling to him.

He wanted to dance. He wanted to go crazy. His skin felt too tight over his muscles and he wanted to shake it all off. He wanted to meet someone and be taken home and shown a good time. The feeling was so positive and glowing that he really thought maybe this time, he’d even enjoy it.

.

He didn’t enjoy it. He woke up in the dorm across the street in a stranger’s bed and wanted to scream. His skin still felt too tight, and now it was uncomfortably so. Foreign and stifling. He felt trapped. He slipped out quickly without waking anyone and ran across the park to his own building, where he went straight upstairs to the bathroom and took a shower hot enough to leave his skin red for almost an hour after he was done.

.

“Take these.” Jaehyun was standing over Ten’s prone form in bed, and he shook a bottle of Advil in front of Ten’s face. “That’s some hangover you got.”

It wasn’t a hangover, but that’s what Ten was calling it, because there was no other way for him to describe it. His stomach felt like lead and the thought of eating made him nauseous. The thought of getting up out of bed made him want to cry. He’d slept with a boy last night and he’d hated every moment of it but he made himself do it because he thought maybe, eventually, it would stop feeling like he was a pretending and he’d be real. A real boy. But that hadn’t happened and now he was disgusted at himself for trying, too. He’d done this for years and nothing had ever changed, so why'd he think last night would be different? But at the same time, why _was_ last night so different?

Jaehyun sat on the edge of Ten’s bed, sighing. “Do you want to talk?”

Ten did not want to talk. He didn’t want to even open his mouth in case everything in his head came out to Jaehyun and he ruined their friendship with this big fat gross secret he’d been harboring inside of his chest for years. Jaehyun would look at him differently. With pity, maybe. Ten dreaded that, too. He turned his face away and pulled up his covers so that Jaehyun would get the message.

Jaehyun didn’t. Or maybe he did and deemed the situation worrisome enough for him to press on, anyway. He leaned back and put his arm over Ten’s belly in a strange sort of hug, soft and careful, and that’s when Ten realized he would start to cry in just a few moments.

He wouldn’t be able to stop it. Thinking about crying made him want to cry more, and so he let it happen, and the tears came and Jaehyun was there, his best friend, letting Ten curl up against him and bawl. “Maybe not now,” Jaehyun said quietly, “but someday, whenever you want to talk. I’ll listen, okay?”

After a few sniffles and shaky false starts, Ten nodded. He still kind of hoped that day would never need to come.

.

Ten stood outside the classroom for his Gender Studies breakout and tried to pep-talk himself into opening the door. He’d skipped lecture earlier this week because his stomach had started hurting just thinking about attending class, but he knew he couldn’t really skip the smaller breakout sessions.

He didn’t really want to see Johnny.

Johnny was confusing him. He liked Johnny. That much was obvious, and he’d come to terms with it over the weekend. And he thought maybe Johnny liked him, too. That much was less obvious, and maybe too much on the side of hopeful.

So he liked Johnny, but so what? What was he going to do with that? Hold his hand, maybe kiss a little, and then if it goes any further, stop him and tell him, _sorry, but the thought of having sex with you kind of makes me want to run away_? Ten couldn’t imagine anyone taking a comment like that well, and since he hadn’t thought of a way to let Johnny down gently, he would have preferred just avoiding him in the meantime. Maybe forever. That was reasonable.

But Johnny was in class when Ten opened the door. Johnny waved at him. He smiled at him. He ran his fingers through his hair and flipped it and Ten’s joints got all wobbly and he couldn’t help but walk up and plop down in the seat next to him like always when Johnny waved him over.

“Hey,” Johnny said, leaning in close. “You weren’t in lecture. Are you okay?”

He was so close that his breath brushed across Ten’s cheek when he spoke. “I’m fine,” Ten whispered in a squeaky voice. “Just felt a little sick earlier this week, but I’m fine now.”

Johnny’s smile was so soft and earnest. It came from the heart; Ten could tell. Then the taller boy reached and put his hand over Ten’s on the desk, squeezing lightly. “That’s good,” Johnny said. “You should have told me or something, though. I would have brought you soup. Or something.” He looked away then, cheeks tinted pink.

“Or something,” Ten repeated back, staring.

“What was that?”

“I like soup,” Ten said quickly, wanting to smash his face into his desk immediately afterward at how stupid he sounded. “That’s nice of you.”

Johnny squeezed his hand again. Ten wanted to turn his palm over so that he could slot their fingers together, and he’d just about mustered the courage to do so when Heechul slammed the door open with his entrance, and they both pulled their hands away from each other like they’d been shocked.

.

That night, Ten couldn’t stop thinking about the way Johnny’s hand felt over his. How cute Johnny was when he blushed. The way his hair fell over his eyes so he had to keep pushing it back behind his ear with a finger during class. Something in his stomach fluttered.

.

“Who do we know here?” Jaehyun yelled into Ten’s ear. It was the weekend again and this time they were at a different club. The sign at the door had just been a neon-lit pair of pink cherries, and inside the club, the motif continued. Dark pink lights flickered along the walls, and most of the drinks were pink as well. They were herded through the long line at the front by Doyoung, who gave the bouncer a name at the door to get them in, but then they immediately lost Doyoung in the crowd struggling to get through coat check. When Ten and Jaehyun were done and ready to enter the club properly, Jaehyun stopped short of stepping out onto the dance floor in his skinny jeans and black shirt, and Ten ran into his broad back.

“What’s up?” Ten yelled up at Jaehyun. The music was EDM and loud and thrumming through Ten’s chest. His black silk shirt was starting to stick to his skin.

“Is this a sex club?” Jaehyun yelled back, pointing. Ten followed his finger with his gaze and saw that he was pointing at a cage that was on top of a high platform. Inside the cage was an aerial dancer in a leotard moving like liquid around and through a large ring. Behind her in another cage was another dancer, working with aerial silks.

“I think it’s just a fancy club, Jaehyun,” Ten said, coming around to his front and patting him on the chest. He had to look up at Jaehyun to make eye contact, which was something Ten secretly liked. He felt small and a little sacred when Jaehyun did stuff like cage his arms slightly around him in a crowded train.

Doyoung slammed into them then, smiling hugely, the lights glinting off his teeth. “Where’d you go? Come on! We have a table.” He grabbed Jaehyun’s wrist and started to drag them through the crowd and club, and Jaehyun grabbed Ten's wrist before he could get too far, and together they weaved through bodies and cut through the masses like a snake through tall grass. When they finally reached their destination, Ten had been stepped on three times and come into dangerously close contact with unclothed armpits twice. He was relieved to be at the table, where the crowd was thinner and they had space to breathe.

A group of beautiful girls sat on one side of the low glass table, chatting with each other excitedly and sipping on pink drinks, and a smaller group of boys sat on the other side. One of the boys stood when Doyoung got closer, and stepped around the knees and ankles in his way to reach him and pull him into a handshake-hug. “You made it!”

Doyoung nodded enthusiastically and then gestured to Jaehyun and Ten behind him. “These are my friends! Friends, this is Taeyong! We’re in KSA together!”

Taeyong was...pretty. Like crazy pretty. His face reminded Ten of a cat’s. A gorgeous cat with smokey-lined eyes and a cool line shaved in his eyebrow and high cheekbones to die for. He came over to give them hugs and he smelled like citrus and allspice. “Thanks for coming!” Taeyong said. “It’s my girlfriend’s birthday!”

“Who’s your girlfriend?” Jaehyun asked, and Taeyong gestured behind him to where the group of beautiful girls were sitting. One of them, as though Taeyong had communicated to her with telepathy, looked over and waved with a wiggle of her fingers at them. She was gorgeous, too, with her small, oval face and doe-like eyes. She flashed a smile and then turned back to her girls with a look of such fierceness that Ten actually shivered.

“She looks like she could kill me,” Ten admitted to Taeyong, and Taeyong only grinned.

“Oh yeah,” he said somewhat dreamily. “Irene totally could.”

At Ten’s back, there was rustling as someone tried to get through the crowd, and then a body bumped into him and nearly sent him sprawling into Taeyong’s arms, but then Taeyong was helping him stand upright again and beaming at the person behind Ten, and he was saying, “Johnny!”

Ten looked back over his shoulder. Johnny stood directly behind him, almost on top of him, holding two drinks, and his grin was like the Cheshire Cat’s. “Didn’t think you’d be here,” he said, quiet enough for only Ten to hear. He reached past Ten with one of the drinks and handed it to Taeyong, who took it from him.

“Didn’t think you’d be here either,” Ten said.

“I’ve known Taeyong since freshman year,” Johnny said. “He’s been trying to get me to join KSA ever since.”

“Doyoung is in KSA,” Ten said, pointing haphazardly behind him. Johnny wasn’t look anywhere but at Ten, anyway.

“Well, that explains it.” Johnny looked down at his drink, then back at Ten. He smiled wider, brighter. For a moment, it felt like all the music had faded away and it was just the two of them, cocooned in their own awareness of each other. Then Johnny nodded with his chin in the direction from which he came. “Wanna get a drink with me?”

“Yes,” Ten said. “Yes, I do.”

.

Three drinks later they were still at the bar. Ten never wanted to leave. The pink-hued lights made Johnny’s skin glow and Johnny’s arm was around Ten’s waist, hand resting at Ten’s hip, and Ten felt anchored. Safe. At harbor. There was chaos all around them but they both had drinks in their hands and Johnny was talking about this show on Netflix he’d been watching and Ten loved watching the way words made Johnny’s lips move.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Johnny asked. Ten didn’t catch him the first time, so he asked again.

“Back to yours?” Ten asked.

“Sure, or yours. Or another bar. Wherever you want.”

“Yours, then,” Ten said without thinking about it. As they weaved their way through the crowd to the exit, Ten realized he was tipsy on the way to being drunk. Walking in a straight line was difficult, but with Johnny’s hand at his back helping him, he felt okay. They took a cab back, and on the way, Ten texted Jaehyun and Doyoung to let them know where he was going, and Johnny slung his arm around Ten’s shoulders.

As they neared campus, Ten’s stomach started acting up again. Not butterflies, but something hot, and tight, and uncomfortable. He took deep breaths to try to keep whatever this feeling was a bay, but it was no use. The acid-sick feeling crept up to his chest, too, and by the time they were in front of Johnny’s dorm building, Ten wanted to be sick.

“You okay?” Johnny was asking, eyebrows furrowed in concern. He helped Ten out of the cab and kept his arm around his shoulders as he guided Ten to the entrance of the building. They were both able to swipe in with their IDs.

“Yeah just, um, carsick,” Ten managed in a small voice.

“Oh no.” Johnny frowned. “We should have taken the train or something. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” Ten straightened and forced himself to be well. This stomach thing was just his mind playing tricks on him, anyway. They got into the elevator and Ten fell against the other boy when the lift moved, seeking stability. Johnny held onto him.

“Just let me know if you’re gonna be sick.”

They got to Johnny’s floor. It looked remarkably similar to Ten’s floor in another building. Same grayish-white walls. Same cheap carpeting. Same harsh lighting overhead that washed out your skin. Same air conditioning on blast so that gooseflesh raised on Ten’s arms when they stepped out into the hall. They stopped in front of a door: 9B.

“My roommate’s gone for the weekend,” Johnny shared as he took out his keys and opened the door. “So we’ve got the place to ourselves.”

Ten’s stomach rolled again and he swallowed, following Johnny inside his room and blinking when Johnny flipped on the lights. There were two twin beds against the walls, two desks pushed into the corners, one single dresser unit the two roommates probably shared, a tiny kitchenette and a tiny bathroom to the side.

“Here, sit. I’ll get you some water.”

Johnny sat Ten on what Ten assumed was Johnny’s bed. It was unmade, which was kind of endearing. The sheets were white and the comforter and pillows were red, like Johnny’s favorite sweater. Around the room, Ten could see traces of Johnny everywhere. There were posters up of bands Ten had never heard of opposite the bed, a little basketball hoop over the door to the bathroom, and a stack of packages of instant ramen in the corner of Johnny’s desk. He took the glass of water when the other boy handed it to him, and sipped gingerly, taking it all in.

Johnny sat down next to him, and put his hand around Ten’s waist. He rubbed his thumb over Ten’s hip in what he probably thought was a comforting manner, but Ten’s heart was racing so fast and hard he could feel it in his throat. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to make himself sick again. He didn’t want to see if he would like it, because he knew he wouldn’t. Not like this, anyway.

“Stop,” Ten whispered, shoulders slumping. “Please?”

The hand at his hip stilled, and then was gone. Johnny pulled back, keeping a careful distance between them, and Ten wanted to cry. “What’s wrong?” the taller boy asked.

Ten was quiet as he tried to get his rampaging thoughts into order. The cab ride and the water had helped to sober him up, but he was still not really thinking linearly. He took a deep breath to center himself and said, “I need to tell you something.” He put the glass down on the floor and when he straightened, he tried to look Johnny in the eyes, and Johnny looked back, expression open but wary.

“I’m ace,” Ten said. “Asexual. I think.” He’d come across the term many times in his googling and searching for answers about why he was broken. Most of the time, the answer was that he was not broken. He was just something else which didn’t make sense to him. This word. This identity. It both fit and didn’t, which frustrated him. It was the first time he was saying it aloud to someone else, and he was fighting the urge right now to flee.

Confusion crossed Johnny’s face, and Ten’s heart plummeted down to his feet. That hurt. That was what he was afraid of: that confusion which would turn into pity or disgust. But then Johnny said, slowly, “Okay...so...?”

“So I don’t want to sleep with you,” Ten whispered, because for a long time these words had been a secret even to himself. “Yet. Maybe not ever. I don’t know. But I like you. It’s really confusing, I know. I’m sorry. This is probably, like, not what you were expecting at all, and I didn’t mean to waste your time or anything, but I do like you, I do, I just don’t--”

“Want to sleep with me,” Johnny finished for him. “Yet. Maybe.”

Ten nodded, hoping...just hoping.

Johnny cocked his head like he was thinking, eyes narrowed as he stared off into the top corner of his room and Ten waited with his breath held and his chest burning. Finally, he looked back at Ten, his lips pushed out in a slight pout. “How could you ever think you were wasting my time?” he said.

All the breath Ten had been holding escaped from between his lips. “Uh…” Ten said shakily, not expecting this outcome at all. “What?”

“I like you, too,” Johnny stated boldly, lips curling up into a shy grin. “So thank you for telling me, because I really want to figure things out with you.” He paused. “If that’s cool.”

Ten could feel a well of emotion building up behind his eyes and sucked in a breath to try to keep it at bay, but then Johnny noticed what he was doing and his expression softened and Ten lost it, crying out and pushing his forehead against Johnny’s shoulder. He’d been under-prepared for pity and disgust, but hadn’t prepared for or imagined this -- curiosity, and maybe even acceptance -- could be an option at all. 

“That would be cool,” Ten managed between sobs. “That would be so cool.”

Johnny held him. It felt good to be cradled and coddled even though he looked and felt a mess and was leaking snot onto Johnny’s shirt. It felt good to have said what he said. To still be here with Johnny, who didn’t hate him at all after the revelation. Who still wanted to be with him. Ten looped his arms tighter around Johnny’s neck and they fell like that against Johnny’s bed, with Ten curled on top of him and Johnny landing on his back against his pillow.

“You could still stay over,” Johnny murmured quietly, rubbing Ten’s shoulders and back with his hand. “You tell me what’s okay.”

“I want to stay over,” Ten said. “I want to wake up with you.”

Johnny chuckled, the laughter rumbling from deep in his chest so that Ten could feel it in his position. “Sap,” Johnny said. Ten tightened his hand into a fist and thumped Johnny on the shoulder playfully, and Johnny responded by grabbing Ten in a bear hug and rolling them over so that they were face-to-face and side-by-side on the bed, noses nearly touching. He said, “I want to wake up with you, too.”

.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading~ kudos and comments are appreciated <3
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/andnowforyaya)


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